Page 102 of Entangled

His chest lightly rumbles under my cheek. “I can do that.”

It doesn’t take long for my eyelids to become unbearably heavy with his fingers trailing up and down my spine, and I sink into him farther. The promise of sleep luring me into that place somewhere between awake and a land of dreams. I feel him suck in a breath, then pause for a second before speaking.

“Hey.” He asks quietly, “That guy from last summer. What was his name?”

“Hmm.” I snuggle impossibly deeper into his skin before mumbling drowsily. “Coop.”

His fingers stop their trail on my spine and his body tenses below my cheek.

It takes me a minute to rouse myself enough to ask. “Why?”

There’s a long silence before his fingers start their trail on my spine again.

I hear his answer just as the tide of sleep finally pulls me under. “No reason, Blondie. I was just curious.” He clears his throat. “Go back to sleep.”

And if I hadn’t been so tipsy and sleepy, if I hadn’t felt so secure and happy and loved… I might have noticed the way his body was still taut with tension under my cheek. Because Jace Dawson would make a shit poker player, but I was just enough under the thrall of the day not to notice.

Chapter 27

One Year Ago

I’m lying on the beach, hot and frustrated in the constraints of my tank top, trying to protect the marriage vow tattoo that I got when Coop and I eloped three weeks ago. I had wanted my favorite of his words permanently inked on the skin he was always tracing them onto. The poem that he had told me the day he proposed split in two between us. And he had happily complied, going along with my idea to bypass rings in favor of something more permanent. Possessive bastard that he was. I had taken the first half of the poem about our stars and he had taken the second part that spoke of our souls and insanity.

I hadn’t exactly thought through the fact that we couldn’t get the tattoos wet or have them in the sun for a month… and we were in freaking Costa Rica.

Outside of that cumbersome fact though, we had been basking in marital bliss. I would’ve been embarrassed by how annoyingly in love we were if it wasn’t for the fact that I was so ridiculously happy. It was a little insane to marry a man you had met on vacation, I knew that, but nothing in my life has ever felt so right. Our dynamics were still the same in so many ways. Me throwing bratty comments his way to rile him up while he shoved into my space with his demanding dominance. And yet, at the end of every minute, every hour, every day, there was this love that flowed between us.

But when we had made a quick trip to Monteverde last week to finally check it off my list, he had gotten a call from work he couldn’t refuse. Alec had gotten himself in trouble, shocker, on the job he had taken for Coop and needed some backup. So I had come back to Cahuita alone and he had shot off to Columbia. Promising he would be back as soon as he could.

He had been gone almost a week and the separation had nearly killed us both, coming so soon after our story finally, really began. We had messaged whenever he could pull himself away but still… I had been left feeling like I was missing a limb. And while that feeling caused a little tendril of fear to wrap around me, and probably always would, he was my heart.

Coop had walked through the door at three a.m. this morning, shocking the hell out of me, and looking like death warmed up. The exhaustion pouring off of him. And as much as I had tried to get him to go to sleep… the only thing he had been interested in was burying himself in me. Saying he wasn’t about to let me go out of town for two days on my Arenal volcano tour without spending at least twenty-four naked hours with me. And the reunion had been so, so sweet. He had still been out like a light when I woke up at ten a.m. so I had snuck out of bed, pulled on a pair of bikini bottoms and wandered out here to the beach.

I feel my phone buzz in my hand and sit up, squinting down at it through my sunglasses and seeing Stef’s name flash on the screen.

“Well if it isn’t the devil himself,” I answer, a smile spreading across my face.

His deep laughter rumbles through the phone at my greeting.

“Ah, she lives. I was beginning to think I was going to have to fly down there and make sure you weren’t being held hostage if I received another one-word message of response.”

“I’ve been busy,” I dodge, knowing I need to come clean but not wanting to do it over the phone. He’ll be so pissed he wasn’t there when I got married. Damn Italians were so crazy when it came to those they considered family.

“Hmm. With that guy still? What was his name again? I might have to learn it if he lasts much longer. I think this might be a record for you.”

“Coop.” I laugh. “And yeah, I’m still with him.”

A moment passes before he answers me through the phone. “You sound happy.”

“I typically am with the exception of when Kai gets mopey,” I tease. “But that just sets all of us off.”

“No, well yeah, it does. But I mean you sound almost… I don’t know, giddy. Like a girl.”

“I am a girl.” I scoff.

“Not a normal girl.”

“True.” I sigh, knowing I’m going to give him something or he’ll never let up. “I think I’ll probably head home sometime in the next couple weeks… bring Coop so you can meet him. Make sure you guys haven’t leveled the neighborhood with your debauchery, then decide what the plan is from there.”

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